Apperception
by chezchuckles
Summary: Set about two years into the future (hypothetical season 10), apperception is having a full understanding of an event because of the conditions that inspire it. A story roughly prompted by tumblr's one-writer-girl: "Beckett tries to win them back."
1. Chapter 1

**Apperception**

* * *

'There is no remedy for love but to love more.'  
-Henry David Thoreau

 **X**

 **apperception** : (n) _psychology_ ; [Latin: toward understanding] 1) the process by which a person makes sense of an idea by assimilating it to the body of ideas he or she already possesses 2) understanding of an event that comes about because of knowing fully the conditions that inspired it

 **X**

Her hands are shaking as the elevator ascends.

She's bleeding, and soaked to the skin in river water, and she knows it's bad - bad way to start this, restart it, bad way to come home after four months gone - but she's out of options.

Maybe out of her head.

The bleeding won't stop. Every breath stings, and the blood soaks her shirt, the waistband of her jeans. She was too afraid to look after she dragged herself out of the river, too afraid to know. She just wants to get home. She just wants him back, wants to _stop_. She _can_ stop.

He's finally dead. At least there's that. He tried to leave her for dead, but she took him down with her. He's dead and even if it comes back on her, home is safe again. He's dead.

He's dead. (She repeats it in her head like she doesn't believe. Desperate to believe it. He's dead.)

She's having trouble staying on her feet. She swallows against the urge to throw up, closes her eyes. The elevator lurches to a stop and she bounces against the side panel, falling to one knee with a grunt.

When she gets to her feet, the doors are beginning to close again. She has to battle her way out, but everything has been a battle since the night she slipped away. She struggles into the hallway, catches herself on the wall before she can stumble again.

Blood is smeared across the paint. She feels badly for that, but in a distant way, an afterthought.

She knows she's descending into shock.

But not yet. So close now, she will _not_ let him find her dead in the hall.

Beckett pushes herself forward, every step an attempt to erase one hundred and seventeen days without him, without her family, one hundred and seventeen days of leaving.

Her shoulder crashes into the corner and she groans, the pain flaring sharply, fingers leaving bloodied marks on the wall. The East River has left marks on her as well, and she's shaking now, trembling so hard that she has to lock her knees to keep herself upright, press her arms against her sides where the blood seeps, warm.

But when she comes to their door, his door, her body falters. (Not her heart, never her heart, oh her heart ached for them, still aches, the missing so bad it's a taste in her mouth and a pressure behind her eyes.)

She slumps into the frame and lays her cheek to the door, and she thinks about stopping here, just for a rest, just for a moment. But sounds filter through from behind the wood, alluring and promising, remnants of home, and she forces herself to straighten.

She knocks on his door, more a tremor than a fist. Even as she struggles to stand upright (on her own two feet, _stand up Beckett_ , she will meet him face to face and do him the courtesy of not forcing him to take her back-)

The door flies open and she falls inward, her strength giving way.

He reaches for her - pure reflex - but the clothesline of his arm across her abdomen takes the breath out of her. She reels. Pain in pinwheels across her vision.

" _Kate._ "

The baby gives a piercing cry. Beckett groans as Castle yanks her upright and on her feet once more, but he shoves her back.

Her spine hits the door frame, but her knees are buckling.

His face is livid, and broken, and her vision is beginning to tunnel, going dark.

He lifts a hand to press the baby against his chest. The _baby._ "Beckett. How dare you-" He chokes off, staring at his hand, blood-stained, against the baby. "Oh, God."

She sinks to the floor as if in slow motion, everything giving out on her. She wishes so badly she hadn't come. Anything but this.

"Oh, God. Kate. You're-"

She blacks out.

 **X**

There's nothing he can do but catch her with one arm and lower her to the floor. The baby startles again, crying out, but he hushes her with half a thought, focusing on Beckett.

She's soaked to the skin and ice cold, her lips tinged blue, clothes and hair giving off an awful stench. Sewage, rotten fish. He knows that smell. After her car went into the river, the odor stayed in his nostrils for weeks.

"What the _hell_ , Beckett?" He touches her icy cheek, but he feels her breath against the heel of his hand.

Breathing is good.

He skims his hand down her body, searching for the source of the blood. When he pulls apart her leather jacket, he finds it's been shredded - knife? - the material plastered to her torso. It's dark in the loft, and at first he can't see, but as he fumbles at her one-handed, his knuckles drag through something fleshy and warm.

Oh, God.

Blood. Lots of blood. Lots of - of wounds.

Instinct takes over. He moves swiftly, without hesitation. Pressing the baby to his chest for reassurance, he uses his free hand to check her pulse - it holds steady. He pries apart her eyelids to check for blown pupils - no, normal light response. He opens her mouth to check her airway - clear breath sounds, if ragged.

He skims his touch down her torso and shoves up her shirt, a ratty t-shirt stained with mud - and it reeks. Hudson or East River? It doesn't matter, but they were given tetanus shots and broad-spectrum antibiotics afterwards, and they didn't have open wounds like this.

She's going to need medical attention. No matter the reasons for her leaving, he can't do this alone. He _has_ to call in support, even if he can't call 911.

And even still, fresh blood wells up from wounds he hasn't found. Blood under his hand, between his fingers, warm and wrong. He can't stem the tide.

He needs two hands.

"Damn it, Kate," he snarls, and it makes the baby cry out, pitiful and scared, but he needs two hands.

Swallowing back the rage that burns in his throat, Castle jerks to his feet. He lays the baby on the playmat, the mobile swinging overhead with moons and stars, and as he turns back to Kate, he fumbles in his pocket for his phone.

Her face is still on his lock screen.

It jolts him for a moment, how desperately he's held on to this anger like grief, and now she's here, passed out and fresh from mortal danger, and he's brittle with rage.

But he calls Lanie, putting the phone to his ear with a shoulder, as he comes to his knees beside his wife. His distant, estranged, infuriating wife.

 _God_. What has she done? He presses both hands to the wounds he can see and prays that Lanie picks up.

She doesn't get to die on their damn living room floor.

 **X**


	2. Chapter 2

**Apperception**

* * *

'There is no remedy for love but to love more.'  
-Henry David Thoreau

* * *

 _one hundred and twenty-four days ago_

 **X**

His hands shook as the elevator rose. His excitement was a little ridiculous, but it felt good to be back here.

"Not that I don't love staying home with you, sweetheart," Castle cooed. He covered the side of the baby's head with one hand, hoping to still his tremors, and he dusted a kiss to the top of her head. "For terrible timing, you are such a beautiful surprise. Aren't you?"

The baby merely watched him, her eyes as round and dark as her mother's. He was proud to say his youngest daughter adored him.

The elevator lurched as it stopped, the doors stuttering as they opened. Castle hurried off, always wary of the elevator's tendency to act up on him, and he strode into the bullpen.

"Yo, Castle, baby sling looks good on you." Esposito rose from his desk, smirking as he made his way toward them. "Nice to see you, Mr. Mom."

"Shut up, Espo," Ryan said, jumping up to intercept their approach. "Hey, isn't she so tiny? You just don't expect the Captain to have such a tiny little thing. Though I guess she has Beckett's bone structure."

There was a moment of awkward staring at Ryan, who flushed, but Esposito slapped the back of his head and turned to Castle. "Anyway. You can't just breeze through on your way to the Captain's office. You gotta let us all say hi."

Castle obligingly stopped, uncovering the baby's head so the boys could crowd around. Everyone did, actually, LT, the administrative aides, the IT people. They all exclaimed over Madeleine's little fingers, her alert awareness as her head flopped on Castle's chest, and the adorable fuzzy socks with their purple stars.

"Her little onesie matches," Castle said proudly. "The knit hat too." He was completely aware that he'd gone from being the center of attention for taking the over/under on homicide cases and leering at a certain's detective's backside to being the man unstrapping his three month old from the baby bjorn and showing off her cute purple outfit.

"Hey, now, break it up. Move it, people." Kate's voice, rich and authoritative, slightly amused, came from somewhere outside the knot of people. Officers shifted, the crowd parted, and she strolled through them with that deeply pleased look on her face. Her eyebrow lifted wryly at the picture they presented. "Well, Castle, should've known it was you. Who else can turn the Twelfth upside down so quickly?"

"Well, me and Madeleine both," he grinned back. "Team effort." Kate lifted her chin, he ducked, and their lips met in a brief, soft kiss that was filled with a whole lot of wonder.

Still seemed amazing to be here with her. And she still held all that _look what we made_ joy when they came together. Her eyes flickered over them, and he saw the yearning in her face as she took in the sight of their daughter.

"My office," she murmured, but it sounded like a question.

"Course," he replied easily.

"Okay, back to work," she called out, half-turning to nail every single one of them with her Captain's glare. She caught Ryan's sleeve. "Update me in about twenty?"

"Will do, boss."

The guys hung around while everyone else reluctantly scattered, Esposito making a fool of himself over Madeleine's wide-eyed, bright smile. She kicked her feet and tried grabbing for Espo's face, and they all laughed.

"Alright, enough. Let me see my baby," Kate interrupted, reaching in for Maddy. Their daughter gave a happy noise and bobbed her head into Kate's neck, scrunching up at Kate's chest. Beckett turned away, heading for her office with the baby, and Castle chuckled at the sight they made - head to head, nose to nose, Kate whispering so that Maddy's smile lit up her face.

Yeah, okay, she adored her mother too. Just the sound of Kate's voice made Maddy lift her head to look.

The boys patted Castle on the back and made a few plans for next week, X-box tournaments and male posturing that they all three knew really meant they'd spend the time letting Madeleine wrap them around her tiny fingers.

When Castle made it into the office though, all of Kate's easy nature and relaxed amusement had vanished. She held Madeleine against her chest, protectively, huddled on the couch, and the look in her eyes made his stomach flip.

He opened his mouth and she shook her head once, hard, and handed him a note.

 _Office is bugged. Found it this morning, new? maybe a few days old by now. Banal conversation, nothing about the case, don't mention Vikram._

Castle sat down hard on the couch, bile rising in his throat.

Kate's hand came out and squeezed his knee, fierce and desperate, and he clutched it back, afraid he was breaking her bones.

They'd been so careful. So very careful. And when Kate had gotten pregnant, so much had gone on the back burner, Vikram taking the brunt of the work, Castle always at her side for every bit of physical investigating they'd done. But it just hadn't gone anywhere. They were maybe inches from where they'd begun when Castle had been let in on the case, and with yards to go.

But her office was bugged.

"Tell me about your day," Kate said, cutting into the dark spiral of his thoughts. "Both of you."

He lifted bleak eyes to her and saw her pleading with him behind the stony facade of her face. _Please, Castle._

"Our day," he echoed, his voice rough. "We miss you." It was true enough, but it also carried at least some of the grief he'd felt reading her note.

"Miss you more," she sighed. Her eyes dropped to the baby cuddling at her chest, and she had to shake off his hand to swipe under her eyes, carefully avoiding smearing her mascara with tears.

Killed him, how hopeless everything seemed to her now that this had happened. A bug in her office meant they'd rattled too many cages, kicked a hornet's nest, drawn attention to themselves. And he could see it in Kate's face, that she despaired.

And maybe for a moment, he had too. But he was rallying now.

"We can do it," he said suddenly. Meaning more than just their separation during the work day. "It sucked when breastfeeding didn't work out, and I know you feel like you're - not the mom you should be. But what do I keep telling you? We make it work. Crazy timing, formula, whatever we have to do, we'll do it, Kate. We make our family work."

She nodded, gulping so fast he could see her throat bob. "Thanks, Castle." More than just a peptalk over the baby, and she knew it. "I - don't think I could do this without you."

Shades of meaning in that statement, and he heard them all. How she'd left him two years ago thinking it was better for her to go it alone, how they'd worked this case together ever since. And the baby - unlooked for, terrible timing, the danger of having something so small and helpless in the middle of such uncertainty - but together they made it happen.

"You and me, Kate," he told her softly. Even if her office was being bugged. "Partners."

She let out a shaky breath and stroked Madeleine's ear. "I know. Just hard to believe - especially when it feels like I'm running up against obstacles at every turn."

Vikram had been unhappy with them, their investigation had found some really solid leads but they'd been hamstringed by the baby - and now surveillance in her office. "I know coming back from maternity leave has been hard," he started. The _baby_ had been hard, balancing work and her schedule and then the secret work on top of that - work they both had agreed was vital to keeping their new family safe. "But we've made it nearly three weeks now, Kate. That's good. We can make it."

She blinked fast and nodded at him, lips twisting. Her mouth opened as if she wanted to answer him once more, but she shook her head and instead buried a kiss against Maddy's neck.

"I brought lunch," he said softly, pulling the bag around and unzipping it. "Formula for Madstar. Chinese for us." He pulled out the plastic bag of takeout and tried to grin, waving the food enticingly.

Kate hugged Madeleine to her but her eyes were feverish on his. "You're a good daddy, Rick," she said, her voice breaking. "I am so lucky - _we_ are so lucky - to have you." She slid closer to him on the couch and leaned in, and he felt the weight of the baby between them as Kate's lips caressed his cheek. "You are my silver lining, babe. It's just storm clouds and tornadoes without you."

He kissed her back, finding her mouth sad and turned down. "I told you I'd walk through natural disasters for you, Kate. Baby doesn't change us."

 **X**


	3. Chapter 3

**Apperception**

* * *

 **present day**

 **X**

She wakes in the hospital - drowning.

She sucks in, but no air will come, panic rising up and choking, her eyes wild and her fists gripping the sheets. She gasps, but it's soundless, her lungs crushing inward.

She can't breathe. Can't breathe. She's drowning.

Beckett flails out, catches something hard. She keens in pain as her body trembles.

"Kate?"

She darts her eyes over, Castle, Castle is here, and he's gripping her hand, cupping the back of her neck to lift her fully upright.

She wheezes, but her throat feels swollen shut. She fixes her eyes on him, begging.

He turns his head, bellows towards the door. "Nurse! Nurse! She can't breathe!"

She can't breathe.

She's blacking out. She can't hang on to him.

The second before everything closes down on her, she feels Castle let go.

She has no control over her body to keep him with her.

 **X**

His mother comes through from the anteroom, rubbing her hands together and reeking of antiseptic and alcohol. She's been following the rules, thankfully, hasn't worn a trace of her usual scent, not even her heavily-perfumed make-up, just a few dashes of stage powder that make her look...

Castle stops thinking it, instead stands from the chair to greet Martha as she escapes from the quarantine station. "Mother," he murmurs, and he hears how his voice breaks in the too-quiet room.

She flinches. "Darling." An embrace but no other words come. She's been uncharacteristically mute ever since Kate disappeared four months ago, and it seems she still had nothing to say on the subject.

She knows them both too well.

He glances at her subdued wardrobe, the lack of jewelry or scarves. "Where's-"

"Madeleine is just fine, fine," his mother interrupts. "Though it doesn't seem fair to Alexis."

Feedings and the constant attention, the sleeplessness and single parenthood. His burden, not his daughter's. Not either of his daughters' burdens to carry, and yet they have all been forced to tough it out alone.

"Not really fair to any of us," he says finally, not looking at his mother. Not looking at Beckett either.

Martha sighs, her silence more unsettling than her lack of make-up and costume. But the infection-control zone around Beckett means air purity is at a premium. Cheerfulness be damned.

"How is she?" his mother finally asks.

"Not good." He rubs the back of his neck. "Her lungs are filling with fluid. They have to keep suctioning her out, and she wakes up in the middle and - and cries."

"Oh."

He grits his teeth and hisses out a breath. "And sometimes I feel like she deserves it."

"Oh, Richard." Heavy acceptance in her voice. And maybe his mother is no better at forgiveness than him. Maybe that's where he learned it, to hang onto the anger, the grudge, so tightly it starts to putrefy. Like loving Kate Beckett. He's held on until...

"She'll make it," he says finally. "Never met someone as strong-willed as Beckett." But it rings falsely for all his forced belief. A hollow note in the room.

His mother lays a hand on his arm, a gentle touch that almost unmakes him. "Darling. Richard. You should come home. A shower, clean clothes. Sleep in a bed. Not to mention your girls are worried about you."

"Maddy," he sighs. "Is she sleeping at all?"

"Alexis was resolutely cheerful when I talked to her."

"So, no," Castle mutters, pressing his hand over his eyes. Madeleine likes to cuddle at night, needs his heartbeat close to fall asleep.

Or maybe he's just needed her so much that he can't bear to put her down, maybe he's just spoiled his littlest girl because she's all he's had left of her mother.

Until now.

If her mother survives the pneumonia that fills her lungs and the blood poisoning that infected her open wounds that night she fell into his loft. Superficial stab wounds, they said, but the river had already done its damage. The infectious disease doctor has had to go in three times and reopen the wounds, clean them of infection, and seal them back up again.

"Oh, no," his mother whispers. "Richard. She's bleeding again."

He spins around and sees the dark stain at her hip, even through the blankets. "Go get the nurse. Julie. Go get Julie."

"Why can't they make it stop?"

"I don't _know_ , Mother. Please. Get the nurse."

His hands are shaking as he peels back the blanket and lifts her hospital gown. The bandages are bound all the way around her ribs and torso, and he's biting the inside of his cheek to keep from yelling.

He doesn't know how to not be furious with her.

Even as she's dying.

 **X**


	4. Chapter 4

**Apperception**

* * *

 _one hundred and twenty-three days ago_

 **X**

Kate scraped her hair off her face and turned slowly in the study, taking in the light through the windows, the lines of the bookshelves she knew title by title, and the massive desk on which they had probably conceived their daughter.

Castle came in from the living room and dropped his hands on her shoulders, kissed the side of her neck. "Find anything?" he murmured at her ear. A squeeze that did nothing to relieve her tension.

She shook her head, turned into his arms. "No. Not a single thing."

"Trust it?"

She chewed on her bottom lip. Her anxiety levels were pretty high, but she'd been in her therapist's office for two hours this morning, working herself into and then out of a panic attack.

"I trust you," he said, and then raised his voice. "I trust you. We're clean. We can talk freely, Kate. This is our home."

She didn't want to point out that numerous suspects had found easy access to his loft. Wasn't helpful. "Maddy asleep?" she said finally.

"Not yet. On her way though."

"Sweet baby," she murmured, dropping her hands and stepping back. "I have the rest of the afternoon. Took a personal day for therapy." She glanced over her shoulder towards the living room. "If you don't mind..."

Castle chuckled and nudged her away. "Go. I know you want to hold her all through her nap."

She flushed and turned to look at him, ducking her head at the knowing grin on his face. "I just-"

"You just love her, and you miss being home," he finished. His lips flirted with a smile, and he leaned in, kissed her with a loud smack. "We love you too, Kate."

She knocked her cheek against his, the warmth of his affection washing all through her. The panic, the anxiety - those roiling emotions faded to the background when he crowded her like this. She was addicted to him, this feeling he gave her that the world could be theirs, that this was going to work out.

Even with her office being bugged, with LockSat lurking, Rick Castle gave her hope.

He pushed her towards the living room, and she went, smiling at him, she knew, like an adoring sap. He winked and sat down at the desk, opened his laptop.

Kate hurried into the living room and found their daughter awake and kicking in her bassinet before the window, her eyes focused on the mobile over her head. The stars twirled and sparkled and Kate touched one with a finger.

Madeleine squealed, catching sight of her mother, and Kate laughed, reaching in to pick her up. The baby gurgled, open mouth wet at Kate's neck, like a kiss, and Kate rubbed her daughter's back, humming.

The late afternoon light came through the window, dazzled Maddy so that she gave a little wonderful gasp and lifted her head for a brief moment. Kate turned her nose into the baby, kissing the little neck, the round cheek. Maddy nuzzled into her mother in response, body curling up.

Kate was almost breathless as she cradled her daughter, easing the baby down into the crook of her arm. She swayed there in the waning light, stroking her fingers over Madeleine's sweet perfect nose, around her bow lips, dusting her cheeks and chin.

"Sleep, sweetheart." She skimmed two fingers across Maddy's eyebrows and the baby's lids drooped. "That's it. Sleep for me. It's naptime, and we're safe at home. Perfectly safe. Never let anything happen to you."

Madeleine's lashes closed, her body going slack in Kate's arms.

 **X**

They laid together in bed, face to face, huddled in for warmth against the chill that had gone through the room now that it was dark. Kate was too tense to sleep, and she could see it affecting even Castle.

"Nothing here," he told her again. But he kept his mouth near her ear, speaking softly. And it wasn't just to keep from waking the baby.

"I know, I know," she murmured back. "But my office. I want to know who and when. _How_. A bug in my office, Castle."

"It's bad," he admitted. She could feel his five o'clock shadow against her chin and she shivered. His fingers were pressing into her spine just below her skull, getting at those hard knots. "It's bad, I agree. But no listening devices at the loft. None at my PI office either."

"Just me," she whispered, the truth of that dawning. Castle was in the clear, Castle was - they thought she was the only one.

Had to keep it that way. She was not making her kid an orphan.

An _orphan_.

Maddy could - her daughter could turn out to be just like Kate, the albatross of a murdered mother around her neck for the rest of her life, never quite able to find peace again.

"Oh, God," she groaned, burying her face in his neck. "Maddy."

"It's okay. We're going to make it," he said fiercely. "This doesn't change anything. I won't let it. We have fought too hard for this family."

"Our baby is three months old," she moaned. "Rick. What the _hell_ were we thinking?"

"She's a gift, a beautiful surprise, she-"

"We should never have-"

"Don't say that. Don't." His grip was painful, bruising, and she lifted her head, willing him to see, to know, to understand how bad this was.

He growled her name and rolled on top of her, his weight bearing her down. She groaned and bucked up into him, desperation making her dizzy.

"Don't say it," he husked. "Don't think it, Kate."

All the terrible grief closed down on her, but his body - his body was a flame, burning bright, fierce, unshakeable. He never gave up, he _never_ gave up.

"Love me," she demanded, already pushing her hand between them, into his pajama pants. "Love me, _please_."

"I do," he groaned. Fumbling at her nightshirt, rucking it up. "I am. I always will-"

He sank into her just that fast, no warning, no sweet anticipation, just the brutal shove of his body inside hers. She cried out his name, thrilling to his force, and worked to drown her fear in his love.

 **X**


	5. Chapter 5

**Apperception**

* * *

'There is no remedy for love but to love more.'  
-Henry David Thoreau

 **X**

 _present day_

 **X**

She swims up.

Like breaking the surface, she gasps for air, her heart fluttering.

It's dark. The dreams are wraiths, mist in the night, wispy. Her skin is clammy. But her eyes are so hot, rough and gritty. She swallows and cries out at the pain, surprised by how much her throat hurts, her body, her lungs.

A shift of darkness. A blur of motion beside the bed. A click of a light low, near her head, and she winces, but strains through the gold for the sight of his face.

It's Martha.

Kate sinks back to the mattress, breathing hard, embarrassed by his mother's presence, by her own feebleness, by the way tears leak out of her eyes.

"Oh, Katherine, darling," Martha whispers. Her fingers hover at Kate's shoulder, and then lay to rest there, patting. And then it's a gentle touch at her cheek, a thumb across the wet tracks, and Martha leans in to place a dry, cool kiss to Kate's forehead.

A sob breaks her, but it sets off a cough that goes on and on, hunching her inward, shoulders sloped, throat burning. She winds up collapsing against his mother, unable to hold herself up, unable to catch her breath.

"There, there, darling. It will be all right."

She drags in a breath through her nose and finds a sharp burst of air, sucks greedily as her lungs try to inflate. There's an oxygen cannula at her nose, two IV lines - one in each hand, something hard and inflexible around her ribs, and Martha is leaning her back against the raised head of the bed, detaching Kate's fist from Martha's silk shirt, patting her hand.

The door opens. A harsh poison of light, and Kate turns her face away, still fumbling over each breath, her heart racing.

"She's awake a little, I think," Martha says, abandoning her side to move towards the door.

Kate tries to lift a hand to shield herself from the light, but dizziness catches her by the throat, makes her vision swim.

"Beckett?" Castle, in a kind of anteroom with his foot keeping the door open, washing his hands. "She's awake?"

"Not breathing well."

Castle. Drying his hands and coming inside, the door whispering shut. The darkness is grainy, like a bad film, low light, but she can see all the space he takes up, her eyes hungry for him.

"Oh, God. I don't want her to have to be suctioned again."

She makes a terrible noise, and it has him jerking forward, coming into the spill of weird light. His eyebrows knit together, his face like a stone.

"Kate?"

The tears slip out of her eyes and burn down the sides of her face, make her ears itch. She can't bear to speak, to dredge her throat to find her voice when she can barely withstand the way the air burns with every breath.

"Kate, crying will only make it worse." His thumb catches a tear at her earlobe and then his palm warms the side of her face.

She leans her head into his touch and closes her eyes, relief spilling hotly.

"Hey, come on," he whispers. She can feel the width of his presence above her, at her side. A chair scrapes the floor. "None of that. Not even Maddy cries this much."

She sobs, eyes flaring open. _Maddy._

His face shutters closed, and he stares down at her. "You really are awake."

She swallows hard, her throat cramping raw. "Cas-"

"Don't try to speak," he says, stern. Everything about him is hard. "Vocal cords were a little damaged by the tube. And they've been suctioning your lungs to drain the fluid. Kinda all messed up, Beckett."

He's hunched over as he stands at her bedside, so close, barely breath between them as his eyes search hers. She finds the pocket of his jeans with a graceless hand, tries to hang on to him but the pulse-ox on her finger makes her fumble.

Castle catches her hand and presses it back to the mattress, and then he's sinking down to the chair. Close but - not close.

Martha drops a hand on his shoulder. "I'll head back now, unless you-"

"No, Mother. Thanks." His eyes shift away from her, then his whole body turns. He says something in a low voice, an undertone she can't distinguish, and Martha sighs.

His mother looks tired. Old.

So does he, now that she's looking.

"Cas-tle," she croaks.

He turns back to Kate as his mother leaves, a brittle smile barely staining his face. "Stop trying to talk. God knows that should come naturally."

Her heart falls.

He starts checking things off, listing her condition. "You have a resistant strain of pneumonia, probably picked up in the river?"

"E-east," she mouths.

His jaw works. "Oxygen, IV fluids, and anti-virals. Cracked ribs."

"Ow," she whispers. But he doesn't smile.

His chin drops; he resolutely studies her hand, slowly takes it into his own, this thumbs across her knuckles like he's sending her a message. "Yes. Well. Pneumonia has messed up your lungs, fluid keeps building, your lips and fingernails are persistently blue, and to top it off, the knife - the knife wounds are in danger of becoming chronic. They can't get them to heal."

She swallows, throat so painful a whine escapes. He squeezes her hand as if in reflex, and she finds his eyes on her again.

"Kate." His eyes are flint. "Now would be a good time. If you really do - if it wouldn't be too much trouble for you to _stay alive -_ for once to just value your own life _-_ now would be the time."

He drops her hand and presses his thumb and forefinger into his eyes, shoulders hunched. He scrubs his hand down his face and his gaze falls to the opposite wall.

Bleak.

She _was_ fighting for her life. He is her life.

But he doesn't look at her now. "They're not optimistic. And I really didn't want Maddy turning out like you."

 **X**

Castle sinks down to the chair in the hallway, his back popping in protest.

The overhead lights flicker and buzz as a bulb begins to dim. He shifts his feet forward and takes as deep a breath as he can manage, but his guts feel ripped out.

Meeting with the doctors didn't go so well. And then Kate was awake, aware enough this time that he could see it in her eyes.

How she cried.

For the last three hours, just tears. He sat there, and he tried to explain, and she cried. When she passed out again, he called in a nurse, and now they're checking her levels, adding another iV bag of saline. Unpacking the wounds.

Castle presses his hand over his eyes and his shoulders slump. His elbow hurts where it's been digging into the arm of a hospital chair for the last five hours, but that's the least of his concerns.

He doesn't know what to think. Doesn't know what to do.

"Come on, Castle."

He swallows roughly and lifts his head, grimacing at the way Ryan flinches back from him. But the detective rallies, moving in to grip Castle's shoulder.

"Come on. I'm taking you to dinner."

"Can't," he scrapes out. "She's in quarantine-"

"I know," Ryan says gently. "We know, man. But you need to get out of here. You can take a decon when you get back. Espo is right outside the door."

He could go. The hospital is the best money can buy. The added sterile field requirements make it even harder for someone to get through the multiple layers of security. Esposito is right outside the door.

Whatever happened, however she got dumped in the East River, she can't be easily gotten to now.

"The hospital cafeteria," Rick compromises, scraping his hand down his face.

Ryan sighs, but gestures him to get up. "Fine. Alright. Hospital caf."

A cup of coffee, maybe.

But it won't erase three hours of watching his wife cry herself to sleep.

 **X**


	6. Chapter 6

**Apperception**

* * *

'There is no remedy for love but to love more.'  
-Henry David Thoreau

* * *

 _one hundred and twenty-two days ago_

 **X**

He was being paranoid.

Her PTSD had somehow transferred to him, that was all.

Castle juggled the baby against his chest and shifted, caught sight of the man near the sharks once more. Average, lanky, brownish hair.

"What do you think, Madstar?" He carried Madeleine in the crook of his arm, facing her outward so that she could see the dolphins swimming through the deep blue water. "Think he's following us?"

Madeleine, even at three months, was such a bright thing. She waved her arms and smacked her hands against the glass. He was standing too close, but she loved it, and he loved indulging her. Maybe too much, since Kate indulged her as well. He had always expected Beckett to be the bad cop, but she just couldn't pull it off.

"Nah, he's not following us. He's just really interested in those sharks, huh?" He jiggled Madeleine up and down, waving her arm at the dolphin that flipped in close. Maddy squealed, that adorable high-pitched sound that the dolphins responded to.

Everyone responded to, really. Heads turned, smiles their way. An older woman with a hand on her grandson's shoulder leaned in and cooed at Maddy, and a couple of teens even winked at them.

But the man at the sharks ignored them like it was his job. Steadfastly.

"Let's head to the sea turtles, Madeleine. What do you say? Yeah? You think so? Me too. Getting crowded in here."

Castle patted her belly as he moved off, heading for the long hall that would lead back upstairs to the hands-on exhibit.

The man didn't follow.

 **X**

Behind the hot dog stand, waiting for Alexis to come back to the table with their tray, Castle froze.

He wasn't paranoid.

It was the same man.

Wearing a hat now. Different jacket. But the same man.

It was the same man.

Madeleine squealed and smacked her hands on the table, gave him one of her shy smiles at the sound. Castle roused, blinking fast to clear the shock from his system, and then he cupped the side of Maddy's face, bending low over the baby.

"Hey, hey, you're fine. No harm, no foul, sweetheart."

"Hey, Dad. I got our food. Maddy! Did you love the dolphins?" Alexis came bursting into the tight band of his worry and it broke, snapped like a stretched rubber band.

Castle let out a breath, grinning at her. "She adored the whole aquarium, just like you did at her same age." He leaned in and kissed his oldest daughter's cheek, delighted by the roll of her eyes.

"Here, give me my sister. You eat and I'll entertain."

"She has a bottle in the bag," Castle said, giving the baby up to Alexis. "If you don't mind."

"Of course." She dug through the bag on the picnic bench between them with one hand, and Castle pulled the tray towards himself. He unwrapped the taboo chili dog (Kate would kill him for this) while Alexis popped the top off the bottle and aimed it towards Maddy's open mouth.

"She's hungry. Careful." Castle bit into the hot dog and watched as Alexis teased Maddy's lips before pushing the bottle into her mouth. Madeleine grunted and sucked down the formula, a little hand coming up and batting at the bottle.

"She's cute. Trying to hold the bottle."

Castle swallowed his bite and nodded to Madeleine's batting hand. "She's also strong. So watch out - knock that bottle right out of your hand if you're not paying attention."

"Strong like Kate," Alexis grinned, flashing him a look.

He grinned back. "Exactly. And just as stubborn. You don't want to hear her scream when she's knocked it to the ground."

Alexis laughed, but he was being serious.

And still, the phantom touch of eyes lingered on the back of his neck.

He didn't turn around, didn't make a show of it. He just slowly, casually shifted his gaze.

The man wasn't watching them - in the same way Castle wasn't watching the man.

 **X**

On the subway, Castle cradled the back of Maddy's skull in his hand, his palm practically dwarfing her head. She was deeply asleep despite the clamor and the start and stop of the train, but she was used to that. Jim had told him once that when Kate was a baby, she hit a few months where she was extremely fussy and unwilling to be put down at night, so he and Joanna would take her on the subway to soothe her, riding up and down the Red Line.

Madeleine seemed to be taking after her mother.

Alexis had declined to ride home with them, saying she had to get back to the office, but the man from the sharks had not.

He was here on the subway with them. Carefully not watching from the other end of the car. He was following them home.

Castle rubbed his hand up and down Maddy's back; she really loved the baby carrier, loved being close to his chest and hearing his heartbeat. She always snuggled right up like this.

He reached into the carrier and slowly tugged the stuffed tiger out from between Madeleine's body and his own. It came with difficulty, the floppy thing tangled around her arm and the strap, but it did finally come.

Bright orange with black stripes, two dark eyes, a ring of white felt teeth sewn into the red mouth. A wicked-looking tiger, purchased by Kate when she'd been pregnant, and in one of her moods. She had said the baby ought to know there were tigers in the world and be strong enough to tame them. No happy smiling round tigers that looked more like tabby cats for Madeleine.

 _This time with the tiger_ , he'd said, and then Kate had laughed, and instead of it being a serious, sad thing, it was funny. It was their little joke.

Castle reached behind him with the tiger and stuffed it partly into the half-unzipped backpack on his shoulders. He turned his head to check, and the tiger was pressed against the window of the subway train.

In plain view.

Nothing out of the ordinary, just a father trying to shove all the toys into the baby's bag in a moment of rare calm.

He leaned back, taking a deep breath to keep his heart as steady as Maddy's, covering her soft little ear with his palm. He stroked slowly at the curve of the shell, down around to the soft lobe. The top of the baby sling was just as soft at the back of his hand.

The train stopped at Grand Central Station only a few minutes off schedule, and the doors popped open. Castle didn't budge, and having the baby strapped to his chest meant he could stay in his seat for the most part.

The man at the end of the car didn't move either.

People emptied the car to run for other lines or find their way up and out, while those on the platform hurried inside and packed the car tight. Handholds, coughs into shoulders, shifting and swaying.

Vikram had not gotten on. He'd seen the signal and knew he was being waved off.

Castle left the tiger at his back in the bag and faced resolutely forward.

The man in his baseball cap gave up his seat to an elderly man and made his way to a pole. Not looking at Castle.

He would have to tell Kate.

 **X**


	7. Chapter 7

**Apperception**

* * *

'There is no remedy for love but to love more.'  
-Henry David Thoreau

 **X**

Kate opens her eyes to the grey light.

It glows across the sky. The buildings are a knife's edge against the grey. Like shards of a pearl.

Broken.

A heaviness in her chest makes it difficult to breathe. A heaviness that extends down her torso and into her hips, along her legs and arms.

She turns, slowly so she won't wake the pain that lives in her guts, and she sees the man in the chair at her bedside. "Dad?"

Jim rouses, his head coming up, his eyes bleak. But when he sees her awake, he smiles and leans into the bed. "Katie. How do you feel, sweetheart?" He lays his hand over hers.

Her throat is still raw and though her voice seems to work, she doesn't know the answer to that.

Jim tightens his hand around hers, pats her shoulder soothingly. "It's okay, okay, honey. Don't try to talk. You've had a rough few days."

Her gaze slides around the room, the empty walls, the lack of furniture, the blank and hollow spaces that are echoed inside her. "Castle?" she hopes, her lips twisting down as the emptiness rings in the room.

Her father strokes the hair back from her face, his gaze too tender. "What's wrong with having your old dad?" Jim murmurs, a little smile. "I'm more than willing to sit a while."

Tears spill down her cheeks and her father eases forward, uses the backs of his hands to wipe them from her face. She can't stop them, can't get herself under control.

"Oh, honey. Kate. I know you're in a lot of pain-"

Pain.

"But you're home now, you're home. And Rick has Javier stationed like a guard dog right outside. You're safe," he says earnestly, cupping her cheeks. "You're safe."

"Safe," she gets out. "I killed him. He's dead."

"Who is, honey?"

Her eyes slide past her father, looking towards the door. The closed door, the empty room. "Maddy?" she whispers.

Her father sits down at her hip, still cupping her cheeks, but his smile widens and he leans over her and kisses her forehead. "You'll be so proud of her, honey. She's getting big, sitting up on her own, clapping her hands, and holding her cup. And if I take her hands, she bounces on her feet and tries her best to walk. She'll be running around soon just like you at that age."

Kate feels her breath catch, bubbling up and bursting in her chest like pain. "Maddy," she husks, throat raw. Maddy, getting so big. "Can I-" She closes her mouth and turns her cheek into her father's touch. It hurts. It all hurts.

"Here," her father says, releasing her. He digs into his back pocket and pulls out his phone, wrapped in a curious plastic. Jim grumbles at the obstruction, pushing on the home button to wake the device. "This blasted thing. Let me find it. Hang on."

She swallows the grief that wants out again, finds she can't move to wipe away her own tears. Her body is bound to the bed, held together by straps that wind around her hips and across her ribs and up. She can't shift, can't move, and her lungs feel weak.

"Here we go. Here it is. Look, Katie, here's our beautiful girl."

Jim leans in and shows her the screen of his phone and her mouth drops open. Madeleine. "Oh my God."

"Isn't she something?" her father beams. "That's at the loft. She was reaching for that stuffed tiger from the Madeline books."

Maddy is on her belly in that parachute drop pose, arms out, legs kicking so they're a blur in the photo. Her father must have taken the picture at Madeleine's eye level because Kate can see her big dark eyes and that shy sweet smile.

"She grabbed that tiger too, and then put it right in her mouth."

Kate almost laughs, feels the amusement burn out and die at the back of her throat. She stares hungrily at Madeleine, memorizing her. Not a newborn any longer, but a baby with dark hair that curls on top and around her ears, a baby who takes her toys and sits up and claps, a baby twice as old as when Kate left.

 **X**

Castle rounds on Esposito the moment he comes through the automatic doors. "Where have you _been_? There's only a uniform outside her door-"

"I know. I got here the moment I could, Castle. Chill." Something must show on his face because Esposito immediately dials down his own attitude, face blanking, hands held up in surrender. "Officer Hastings was out on a homicide we caught-"

"I thought you assigned her to protection detail," Castle growls. He feels himself unraveling and it shouldn't be now, here, in front of Esposito. Ryan would understand. Esposito has always been on her side. "Why is she on a body drop when she's-"

"Hang on. Listen. A body washed up in the East River. Pretty bad. Looked like it had been chained to the bottom, ropes, something. Who knows how it broke free."

"I don't-"

"Castle," Esposito looks entirely sober. "Lanie thinks time of death was the day our girl left home."

Castle's guts wash out. "Was it - male?" he croaks. His heart is pounding, palms sweaty. He needs to sit down but the hospital hallway is terrifyingly empty. "Was it-"

"Male," Esposito says, cocking his head to study Castle. "What do you know about it? Don't keep _any_ thing else from us, Castle. The time for you and her damn secrets is over."

"My - there's a man - a CIA agent was helping us," he gets out. He's stumbling over every word, his brain unhelpfully yammering too loudly for him to come up with something plausible. "An older man. Sil-"

"Silver hair. Early seventies?"

Castle feels the chill go down his spine.

She was right.

She was right all along.

 **X**


	8. Chapter 8

**Apperception**

* * *

 **one-hundred and twenty-one days ago**

 **X**

When he rounded the corner of the path in Central Park, he nearly ran right into her. He had to snag her by the arm to keep them both from going down, though Maddy seemed absolutely delighted by literally running into her mother.

"Kate," he laughed. "Thought you said The Met?"

But she wasn't laughing. Her hands fluttered at Maddy's head, stroked the soft spots, kissed her above the sling. "He never showed."

"He never..." Castle let out a frustrated breath. "Of course not. Never count on him, Kate. You taught me that."

"But we are counting on him," she hissed. Her face was dappled with shadows and sunlight under the trees along the path, and she was standing too close, too intense, all of that electric and unfocused energy. "Castle, we _need_ him. To keep us safe."

"He doesn't - Kate, I think you've put too much stock in his abilities. He's a great con man-"

"He's your _father_. I know you haven't forgotten Paris. Castle, he keeps watch, and we need _someone_ out there-"

"Okay, okay," he said quickly, catching her shoulders. He would pull her into a hug if Maddy wasn't strapped to his chest, but as it was, Kate was managing to slide into that space between his arm and the sling, her face buried in his neck.

Maddy waved an arm, caught the side of her mother's jaw.

Kate turned her head, the two of them face to face now, and Castle carefully wrapped an arm around his wife's shoulders. She was hunched into him to fit against his side, she was kissing Maddy's fingers and breathing too deeply, and she didn't often break like this.

"So he missed the meet," Castle said. Sober. Grave. Reflecting the tightly-bound fear in her eyes. "We'll set a new time. We'll give him a few days. There are all manner of things that would keep him. An assignment-"

"You said he was kicked out of the CIA," she said tightly. He could tell he wasn't getting through to her. "You said he was rogue."

"He - I don't even know, Beckett. What's really the truth with him? He said it was cover for getting that list, but you know how that turned out."

Maddy squirmed against his chest, gave a little frustrated cry. The girl liked to be moving, hated when she was strapped in and he wasn't going anywhere. Much like her mother, couldn't still still.

Kate knocked her forehead lightly against the baby. "Hush, Madstar. We're doing okay, we're all okay."

"She wants us to move," Castle murmured.

Kate stiffened. "Yeah. You're right. We should - the Met. We were supposed to-"

"Talk shop before the great works of the Masters, with hundreds of people masking our scheming."

Her lips quirked, eyes coming to his. She was the most beautiful like this. Was it terrible of him to be attracted to her pain? It had caught him from the first, the wound in her eyes, but he'd been too immature to handle it well. He'd done his trick and almost made her cry in her own precinct.

She'd told him off. She'd been so young.

He cupped the side of her face and she flinched. "No, don't-"

He let go, released her, and he saw he'd done it again - almost made her cry. At least now he loved her well enough to know when to heed her warnings.

Kate let out a shaky breath and her spine straightened. She stepped back, caressed the top of Madeleine's head before placing a kiss to the baby's ear.

Maddy gave a happy squeal, kicked her feet. Kate caught one, spread those little toes. "Where are her socks?"

"She keeps kicking them off," he explained. "They're tucked into the pocket." They were walking, Kate so close to his side that he felt the outline of her gun.

Jackson Hunt had missed the meeting. Castle couldn't say he was surprised, but to ditch them now, in the middle of this, smacked of more than just ritual father abandonment.

Kate pulled the little adorable socks from the pocket of the sling, and she tried to tug them onto Madeleine's feet. Tried.

He closed a hand around hers, eased the socks from her tense, near-frantic fingers. "We go on as usual. Don't speak about it at home, the office, we take it very underground. We know how to do this, Beckett. We have all the time in the world."

"Not if LockSat got to your father," she said, letting go of Maddy's foot, letting go. "Not if our protection is gone."

 **X**

Kate Beckett stood before the entrance to the Central Park Zoo, alone, buoyed by three hours of wandering the Metropolitan with Castle and the baby.

He always had known how to keep her from tumbling into freefall. Those spirals that led only to obsession, obsession to death.

She needed him; she was sometimes overwhelmed by just how much.

She stood as nonchalantly as possible, checked her father's watch only when it became absolutely necessary. Infrequently. She tried to anyway. When Jackson Hunt hadn't showed, she had signaled for a secondary meet, an alternate. All she had left.

Beckett had to know what was going on behind the scenes.

"Calling this off."

Kate jerked upright at the sound of the woman's voice, tried to smooth her features as she walked ahead of Rita into the zoo's entrance for their meet. _Calling it off?_ The line carried her forward, but Kate glanced back-

Rita wasn't following.

Kate stepped out of the line and scanned the crowd, heart in her throat until she finally caught sight of the small, wiry woman. Her hair was different - again - a burnished bronze, and more than once since meeting the woman, Kate wondered if the red hair that first time had been a subtle psychological manipulation, aligning herself with the Castle women.

She wasn't a Castle woman. She was Jackson Hunt's - and none of that man had influenced or shaped _her_ Castle at all.

She had to keep that in mind. She couldn't let her guard down. Jackson Hunt hadn't shown up when they needed him.

But she kept a hundred feet back and followed Rita away from the zoo, through the crowds enjoying their suddenly warm Saturday. The covert agent - rogue agent? - was moving towards Fifth Avenue and the bus stop.

Beckett was getting tired of this cloak and dagger stuff. This was her _life_. Her daughter, her husband - Jackson Hunt had gotten her back into this, all of them back into this. She had been _out_. And now.

She caught up to Rita at the bus stop and grabbed the woman's arm. Rita spun out and gripped her in a punishing hold. Beckett flared her nostrils but wouldn't cry out, instead stepped into the woman and broke her grip.

"Don't mess with me," Kate growled. "What is _happening_?"

"He's gone. I'm calling it off." Rita's eyes were hard, glittering with animosity. "Let me go."

"You can't call it off. You can't. It's too late for that. We have people _following_ us."

"Jackson Hunt is gone. I have severely limited options. There are no good choices here, and it's become entirely too dangerous. You're over. You and Richard cease immediately."

Rita jerked forward, but Kate yanked her back. "I am not done with you."

"But I'm done with you. I'm out."

"You can't leave us. It's _your fault_ we're here."

Something changed on Rita's face; she pursed her lips and put her hands on her hips. "I - know. But Katherine, there is _no_ back-up any longer."

"You are our back-up," she said, desperation coursing through her. "You and Castle's father, you have both been here, you've had our backs. You-"

"Without Jack, I have _no_ resources, no contacts to the inside, no ears to the ground. Pick your metaphor, Katherine, I don't have it."

"You have skills I don't. You know things-"

Rita shook her off. "I know too much."

"There _has_ to be something you can do."

The woman turned back, brittle with something Kate realized, finally, was fear.

Rita was afraid.

"What happened to his father?" Kate asked, blood draining from her face. "What happened. Tell me."

Rita gave her a long look. "I don't know."

And that was the worst truth there could possibly be.

Rita pressed her lips together, hands clenching, as if she were fighting herself. Finally, she reached out and curled her hand around Kate's. "There's a chance I can get to the bottom of this. Once and for all. If they got to him, then he got to them first. That's where I have to go. Follow Jack's trail."

Kate's chest tightened. "Follow Jackson Hunt to _what_?"

Rita let go of her wrist, something bleak crossing her face. "To fate. To an end to this." A hard breath. "To LockSat."

Kate's mouth went dry. "Alone?" she croaked.

"All I got." Rita gave her a tight smile. "Why. You volunteering?"

 **X**


	9. Chapter 9

**Apperception**

* * *

 **X**

Kate shifts.

He freezes.

Sitting upright in the bed, she works her throat, but there's no sound.

The beginning of consciousness again, he thinks. He's not sure if he wants it though, if he can stand it.

Castle releases her fingers and withdraws, sinks back into the chair her father has finally vacated. He sent Jim to the loft for sleep, get a shower and fresh clothes, but he knows the man sees too much. _Has_ seen. Every day of the last one hundred and twenty days. How Castle held on to anger because without it there was nothing left of her.

Kate's lips part. Her lashes next. The head of the bed is angled forty-five degrees, not quite upright, and she looks wiped out. Tired despite the last twelve hours sleeping.

She must be staring at the ceiling, her eyes fixed high. She must be working to wake, though she looks like she has no reason to even try. Like the effort is almost not worth it.

His chest squeezes.

Kate fumbles up the hand he abandoned, touches her forehead where the scrape has, at least, begun to heal. Scabbing over, a jagged demarcation in her eyebrow.

"Dad," she mumbles.

"It's me."

She flinches. Her breath catches - she must be in pain, has to be - but her head turns, eyelids heavy. "Rick." Her eyes open. And she sees."Oh, God," she sobs.

He shifts Madeleine against his chest and he stands, a protective hand against the baby's belly. Maddy waves the teething ring.

Kate cries.

He feels like an ass, feels completely shitty when she cries.

He lowers Maddy to her mother's bed, untangling the IV line to keep it from pulling out, cushioning the blow from the teething ring as Maddy bangs it down in a happy greeting.

"Oh, my God. Maddy," she husks. Her arms are weak and Castle has to keep a cautious hand close. He grabs the teething ring and Maddy dives down against her mother, face first, squirming and moving and maybe too much for Kate. This might have been a bad idea.

But once Kate gets the baby tucked up against her chest, the little girl settles in with a gurgling contentment, eyelids falling, that instant hypnotic spell of Kate's heartbeat and naptime.

Like they've never been apart.

Kate's tears streak down her cheeks. She keeps trying to wipe them away, though her eyes shy from his.

"Couldn't bring her before now," he says roughly. He realizes he never explained, never tried to either, and maybe he was punishing her. With their daughter. "You were in quarantine. The pneumonia. And..."

"Couldn't," she chokes out. Her fingers curve at Maddy's ear and stroke. Her eyes fall shut as she buries her nose in Maddy's soft hair. "Oh, God."

She looks wrecked. He _feels_ wrecked. Everything a mess in his chest, a grenade gone off.

"What did you do, Kate?" He's blurted it out without even knowing it was on his lips and they both freeze. He closes his eyes, scrapes his hand down his face. "No, I - I know what you did. Went to her and plunged right into it. Protection." It tastes like a dirty word in his mouth. _Protection._ "There are cops we trust at the doors. I hired private security for the girls and Mother."

"For you?"

"Not specifically." He drops his hand and sees her eyes are closed, her face twisted with something like pain, something like ecstasy.

He sinks back to the chair, defeated. Ashamed. He should have explained why he was keeping her from their daughter.

Her eyes open. "I killed him," she whispers.

He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He-

"I got to him," she goes on. "Rita didn't - she was killed - in front of me. Dumped her body into the river. I tackled him. Desperate move. We fought. I thought I'd been shot. But I took him with me."

"Kate." He grits his teeth. "Is this something I should know? I mean, you spent a good amount of time and burned a lot of bridges to keep me in the dark, but now you can talk to me?"

"I killed him. I took him down with me and I drowned him in the East River." Her eyes close, open again. She's staring resolutely at the ceiling. "It's over."

"It's been over, Kate."

She chokes and her head turns to him, her hand comes out, but the chair is just far enough, and her hand falls, falls to Maddy's back. A spark of something in her eyes that looks both hard and angry. "You - you're safe. _We're_ safe. I took him with me. Into the river. He's dead."

"So is Jackson Hunt. His body washed up yesterday and-" He swallows hard.

"I'm sorry."

"No, you're not." He shakes his head at her, fists tightening. He'd strangle her but she's already so damn brittle. And she's caressing their daughter, cheek to forehead, dusting kisses in a way that makes him hurt. "You would do it again. And again. And again-"

"It's done. I'm done." For a moment, her face is slack, lacks all light. "I'm done." And then her eyes come to his. "I love you, Rick. I will do any-" She takes in a sharp breath. "Anything to keep you." Like disappear underground and not speak to him for three months? "Tell me and I'll do it."

This time, he wonders.

There's no lightning, no rain-soaked Beckett bruised and mottled from a fight on a rooftop. And better, no bleeding to death in his arms.

But something fierce in him responds now just as it always does.

Maybe it's the old trap. Maybe whatever happened, whoever is dead, does mean it's really over, or maybe she keeps 'protecting' him for the rest of their lives.

Maybe she's just too messed up to love any other way.

Maybe he is too.

"There's no having back," he sighs, leaning forward until his elbows hit the mattress. His head hangs for a moment, the weight of their world on him.

He dips his head and kisses the sole of Maddy's bare foot. "No having back."

"No?" Kate whispers, voice cracking.

He winds his arm around her thighs, presses his face to her leg. "You already have me. Much as you brutalize my heart, I seem to need it. I seem to need you, Kate."

 **X**

"I have to take her, I have to. Beckett. Don't make this worse."

She chokes down a sob - and the sense she'll never get her daughter back again - and she lets go. Though Castle wasn't pulling that hard, as if he couldn't bear to take her away either.

Madeleine fell asleep in the curve of her arm, like she used to, like Kate was never gone. Castle's hand splays wide at Maddy's skull, one his thumbs rubbing the baby's ear. And even that sends Kate spiraling.

She buries her face in her hands.

"Hey, we're not going far," he says gruffly. She glances up; his face is shuttered, hard. "I'll watch through the glass."

Through glass.

She lets her eyes slide from his, touches a hand to the place at her side. It hurts, it does hurt; she's known here and there that it's not right, but her days haven't been consecutive, her sense of her own body displaced by drugs and-

And grief.

"Here they are now," Castle says quietly. Already the room is filling with nurses, two doctors, a group of med students who are taking notes on their phones and listening to a man lecture.

Oxygen therapy, doctor's prescription, necrosis of soft tissue, controlled atmospheric pressure.

It's a haze of details she still can't get a handle on, even though Castle told her twice, repeating it slowly. She can't make it connect. The knife wound in her side isn't healing, the tissue is dying, it's packed and bound and makes her feel stiff and fragile, like she's broken under all that.

She _is_ broken under all of that.

They shift her to a gurney, the head raised, IV is transferred, blanket tucked around her thighs, and that sick panic slides through her guts. Castle is following with the baby, there are four med students passing around her chart, the room is falling away from her as they maneuver out of the room and into the hallway.

She grips the sides of the cot and takes measured breaths, counting to keep from hyperventilating again. Her chest is heavy but her lungs are clear, at least she can get enough air, at least she's not dying.

Is she dying?

Kate grits her teeth as they navigate a turn in the hall; the momentum sends her just enough into her side that she takes a sharp breath, stunned by the immediate pain.

It burns. It is _burning_. She stiffens to keep herself immobile, rigidly aware now, the unhealing wound, trying to keep still.

She can't hear Castle's voice. He's somewhere behind her, she thinks, _hopes_ , he's following after like he always does. He always follows.

He said he would watch through the glass.

Her hands are clenched so tightly she can feel her bones grinding. She's wheeled into a long room divided in half, instruments and displays on one side and and on the other side, a range of hyperbaric chambers, each one a little more strange than the last.

The first is a big blue tube. Plexiglass ribbed with rubbery-looking blue rings, either end capped with metal. One end has a handle set into the smooth metal, a hatch to slide her inside. It's open and waiting, like a mouth.

She's shaking.

There are two more tubes on this side of the room, one shaped like an egg with benches inside and one smaller, tighter, almost opaque, small portholes in the side. The tube is at least mostly transparent.

She can't do this. She can't go in there.

The blue tube is squat and low, the same height as the gurney, but it's wide. Wide enough for two people at least, inset with a curved cushion that runs the length of the tube. She's being wheeled straight to it, just like that, the nurses unhooking the end of her IV and attaching it to something in the curved rib of the ceiling, and she's slid right inside.

" _Castle._ " She smacks both hands out, bracing herself against the glass. The gurney stops sliding. The medical students look stunned.

Someone tries to soothe her. Someone tries to cradle her elbows and tug her arms down.

"Castle, please-"

He works his way to the front, but he's stepping past the open hatch. She follows him with her eyes, throat closed up. He's outside the curve of plexiglass, his hand meeting the place where hers is braced, the phantom impression of touch.

But all she feels is cool plastic.

He's picking up a phone?

His voice comes from outside and inside all at once. "I'm right here. They've got a chair for me, see? I'll be sitting right outside." His fingers piano at the glass; she barely feels the vibration.

She drops her hands.

It's like a signal. They're not waiting for her to calm down, figure it out; they're already nudging the gurney back into the tube, the hatch wide enough so that looking out to the rest of the room is so easy. Just keep her eyes on the rest of the room. Just keep looking ahead.

 _I can't do this._

"How long?" she scrapes out, fisting her hands to keep everyone from seeing them shake. "How long am I-" _alone._

"It's only an hour," Castle says through the phone.

The nurse pats her foot. "We've got twenty sessions for an hour at a time, ranging over just a few days."

"Twenty?" she gasps. Her heart is racing, the monitors are telling on her.

"It's okay, Kate," someone says. Not Castle. A doctor. Maybe one of the nurses. "We're going to raise the atmospheric pressure to about three times the normal rate. That allows the lungs to gather more oxygen to be carried by the blood. It's quite safe, but we had to wait for the pneumonia to clear up before we could try this kind of treatment."

An hour. Only an hour. Nineteen more times. Twenty hours of this. Alone.

"Where's Maddy?" she gets out.

"Alexis has her. She's fine. Passed her off outside your room, Kate."

"I don't-" She grits her teeth, lets out a short breath that sounds as desperate as she feels. She closes her eyes. Wills herself to be better than this. She spent one hundred and twenty days fighting for her life, for their lives; she can sit in a stupid tube for an hour.

She can.

She can't. Oh, God, she can't. She really is broken.

"Hey, can I go in there?" Castle says suddenly. Her eyes crack open. He's looking at the doctor. "That thing is a bench. Right beside her. Will it hurt if I-"

"You can," the doctor says, gesturing. "No harm at all to a healthy individual. Parents often accompany young children inside. But you need to change into a sterile gown-"

"Castle," she pleads.

"I'm going in." He puts the phone down, shoulders his way through to the open hatch. His hand grips her knee, tugs her a little ways back out of the tube. "I'll be right at your side." His head turns. "Get me the scrubs, the gown, whatever it is. Don't start yet. I'm going in with her."

A nurse is moving, the med students are being rounded up and sent back to the monitors. Her heart is pounding.

Kate draws her knee up, bending forward until she can snag his wrist. Her side is burning with pain. She grips him hard, but he ducks down into the hatch and his hand flips in hers, fingers lacing.

"Felt wrong watching you through the glass." He kisses her knuckles, far as he can reach, giving her an equally desperate smile. "This is how it's supposed to be. Both in this together."

She nods, tears spilling down her cheeks. Completely unable to stop.

Castle ignores the rest of them and comes crawling inside, cross-legged on the bench, her gurney flush with the edge. He draws an arm around her shoulders and she turns into him, presses her face to the warm smooth skin of his neck.

Breathes in.

"Promise me, Kate."

She clutches his shirt. Nods again.

"No. I want to hear you say it. You _say_ it."

"This is how it's supposed to be," she chokes out. "Together."

 **X**


	10. Chapter 10

**Apperception**

* * *

 **X**

 _one-hundred and twenty days ago_

 **X**

Kate knew he was still not happy with her when she got home that evening and discovered Maddy was already in bed. He had fed and bathed their daughter without her, and then put her in the crib upstairs. Kate liked it better when they kept the baby at the side of the bed, in the sweet cradle that her precinct family had bought for them. But, apparently, not tonight.

Apparently, tonight, he was going to hammer it home once more how wrong she was, how damaged her thinking, how twisted up her way of loving him.

She wasn't sure she could do it tonight, have this fight - this castigation - all over again. She was already so damn close to spiraling, the panic gnawing at her every hour of her work day. If he started in on her again, she might lose it.

Kate could see him through the open bookshelves, sitting in his office and sipping a tumbler of scotch. His arms were flat on the armrests, like he was bracing himself. The back of his head, his shoulders, they were all she could see from here.

He must be furious. He hadn't even turned to say hello. Hadn't come to kiss her either. Or hold her.

She could really use a hug.

Kate slipped out of her shoes and left them by the door, lowered her bag to the floor. She had her weapon on her, as she had for a week now, but she kept it holstered, trying to talk herself into putting it in the safe and not keeping it in her bedside drawer again tonight.

It wasn't that late, but it was late enough, and she felt the tension in every bone of her body, a perpetual, sharp awareness that things were falling apart on them.

When she stalked through the living room and entered the office, she realized the television was on, the news a confusing jangle of images of sounds. He had the remote on his thigh and the tumbler clenched in his hand.

"I know you're upset."

A grunt and he lifted his hand, rubbed his eyes. "Sit," he said. "You need to-"

"I already told you I wouldn't," she went on. She didn't want to sit. She needed to be on her feet for this. "I only thought she should _talk_ about it. We have no support if she goes, no-"

"Beckett," he snapped. "Not the issue-"

"It is an issue. Clearly. Because you're still upset."

"I'm upset," he got out. It sounded like a hollow echo, like the words were foreign. His eyes were fixed on the television, but she barely spared it a glance.

"I have kept my promise. You know everything I know, Castle. Shouting at me for two hours last night isn't how I wanted to have that conversation."

His head swiveled to her, a tight darkness on his face that gutted her. But he reached out and snagged her by the belt loop of her dress pants, yanked her to the chair. "Would you just listen?" he growled. His arm tightened around her, pulled her onto the arm of the chair. "Beckett. The news. Breaking news. How have you not heard about this?"

"What?" The tight circle of her thoughts was broken by the tone of his voice, and she turned her head to the television.

The tv screen showed blue lights, broken glass, a crumpled car. Bystanders gawking. An ambulance. An accident? Castle was clutching her hard, her hip pressed into the side of his head. She dropped her hand to the top of his head, fingers through his hair.

"Castle, what am I looking at-"

"Caleb Brown is dead. They're saying he jumped."

"What?" she hissed, jerking forward to stare at the television. "No way. There is no way."

"Fell on a parked car. A mess, it's - he jumped. They're saying he jumped."

"He didn't jump," she gasped. "He couldn't possible have-"

"LockSat got to him," Castle said grimly. "He found out we had the goods on Caleb Brown and he got to him before we could close in."

"But _how_?" she choked out. Her heart was thundering. "How could he have known? We only got that info yesterday. How-"

"Vikram, you, and me," Castle said, rubbing a hand down his face. "The only ones who knew."

"The only ones who - Vikram," she croaked, jumping to her feet. "Oh, God. Vikram."

"What about-?" Castle asked, but she could see it on his face, the dawning horror. "Kate. No. Wait."

She turned away, moving for the living room. "I have to go. I have to check."

"When did he last call in?" he said quickly, rising to his feet and following her. "Kate, hang on. Wait."

"He checked in with me this morning."

"Call him right now," Castle said tightly, moving around her to put his back to the front door, blocking her. "Who cares about cell towers and burner phones. LockSat already knows. So call-"

"You know I can't do that." She stepped into her shoes once more, checked her gun. "Not now, not after we've lost all our protection. I have to go there and see."

"Kate," he groaned.

"Castle." She reached out and caught his face in her hands, kissed him hard. His beautiful face. "I'll be okay. I'll call you when I get there, when I know."

"In an hour," he said, his throat working. "Call me in an hour. Even if-"

"I will. I'll call. Doesn't give me a whole lot of time, but I will." She kissed him again, but he buried his face in her shoulder. She embraced him tightly, fingers smoothing at his nape. "I have to go."

He straightened up, moved out of her way.

She touched his chest with a hand as she opened the front door, tried to infuse her smile with confidence. She moved through the doorway-

"Kate."

When she turned, his face was like a stone, trying so hard to mask the roiling emotions under the surface.

She leaned back and caught the back of his neck, pulled her into him for another kiss. "I love you. I will _not_ let this happen. Nothing will happen."

His fingers touched her cheek even as she pulled away.

"You better come back to me," he said, even as she was jogging down the hall.

 **X**

When she walked into the strip club, the scene had already been set.

Everything had already played out.

Kate stopped dead, her heart jumping into her throat.

Blood was splashed violently across the grimy floor, the computers smashed in, the whole place a wreck. Neon signs glared on the walls, the stage was littered with trash from take-out and convenience store runs, but it smelled of death.

She pulled her service weapon and carefully crept forward, her palms clammy. She threaded her way through the tables, skirting fallen chairs, following the blood. Carefully. So carefully. The floor was sticky; she kept her boots out of the trail. It was hard to breathe. She had to fight to keep her vision from tunneling.

She knew what was coming. She knew. She didn't want to know, but she already did.

Vikram was in his chair behind the stage.

He'd been shot. Clothes drenched in his own blood, gut wound, messy.

Painful.

He'd bled for so long that his shoes were soaked in it.

"Oh, God," she whispered, reaching in. Her fingers touched his neck and his skin was clammy, stiff. "Oh, Vik."

She withdrew her hand, slowly scanned the rest of the large room. It was obvious he'd been confronted at the door, incapacitated somehow, and dragged to the chair for the lethal shot.

There were glossy photographs flung across the floor, right behind the chair, as if tossed at Vikram. She stepped forward carefully and nudged her toe against one of them, moved it out from under the rest.

It was her. And Vikram. One of their meetings. She was gripping his elbow and smiling. The rest of the photographs were more of the same. They looked - damning.

That was when pieces began clicking into place. When the evidence laid out before her actually registered and she saw the whole drama.

The smashed computers. The blood trail. The incriminating photos. The violence of those wounds. The hideout only she and Castle knew about.

The gut shot.

 _Her extra piece_. She hadn't unlocked her bottom drawer in weeks, hadn't looked, hadn't thought about it.

But to get a bug in her office meant access to her office, to that desk drawer.

Time of death would have been while she was at work, while Castle was home alone with Maddy, no alibi. No alibi at all.

It was all so clear. Laid out so perfectly. It wasn't _her_ LockSat was trying to frame. The smashed computers, the semblance of rage, the damning photographs, the painful manner of death.

LockSat had framed Castle. The jealous husband confronting a lover.

Castle was going to be arrested, her extra piece would be found - somewhere, a dumpster, a sewer grate - with his fingerprints on it. Because the last time she'd had it out was when they'd gone to the gun range, paranoid but determined to be prepared, and he had used that gun, it was _his_ fingerprints all over it, it would be him they came for-

Oh, _God._

There was no way out of this. No way to contain the damage. They would take him, it would happen all over again, and this time she wouldn't be able to save him. _She hadn't saved him last time._ He had saved himself, broken himself out of prison, but it wouldn't be like that now.

LockSat would get to him before he ever had a chance.

Her hands were shaking as she pulled out her phone.

They would - the police would subpoena the call logs, they would see her number on the cell towers as being exactly right here. It would place her on the scene. Her on the scene, and not him.

"Kate," he breathed over the phone. "It's been over an hour. God, I thought you were-"

"Castle," she cut in, tears thickening in her throat. "I'm so sorry."

"What."

"There's no other way."

" _Beckett._ "

"I'm sorry," she choked out. "I'm so sorry. I love you. I love Maddy - you'll tell her how much I love her-"

"Kate, don't do this. Just tell me what's going on. Where's Vikram? What's happened-"

"I love you." She ended the call, bowed her head over the phone.

And then she walked out of the strip club dialing a new number.

It had to look like she was on the run.

She _was_ on the run. As of now.

"Yeah, I need to see about getting my curtains cleaned."

 **X**


	11. Epilogue

**Apperception**

* * *

'There is no remedy for love but to love more.'  
-Henry David Thoreau

* * *

 **X**

"Steady," he breathes, his cheek pressed to hers.

Her eyes are closed, and she knows it's a little pathetic, but she feels so very pathetic.

"There we go. Easy, easy."

When she's finally standing, her breath leaves in a rush, the giddy sensation of height. Castle releases her slowly, coasting down her arms until it's just their fingers touching, barely touching, not touching at all.

"How's it feel?"

 _It?_ "Shaky," she whispers. Claiming it as her own, "I feel shaky."

"You do," he says. His voice lowers to match hers. "Can you walk?"

"Mm. Gonna try."

"Try." His thumb nudges her cheek and skims her hair behind her ear. "Course you will. When you try, you make it happen."

She lifts her eyes to him and despite everything, he looks proud of her. It makes her spine straighten, for him. Even though her torso is now taut with that residual pain, even though she hasn't seen her daughter since yesterday, and that only a few hours, she can stand up straight to make him proud of her.

To make him anything. Anything.

"Don't look so desperate, Beckett. They might not let you out of here."

She scowls, instinctively giving way to the pain, and his hands come back to her elbows. She's about to say something, about to start a conversation they need to have, ought to have, when the door to her hospital room opens behind Castle.

Kate freezes. Just beyond his back, someone's stepping inside, someone she can't see. He's turning his head.

Anxiety crests like a wave. She fists his shirt and croaks his name, panic pushing her to fight him, to put herself between him and whoever has come through that door. To shield what is most most precious.

Only she has no strength, no leverage, nothing. She cries out as the wounds tear in her side.

Castle startles back around to her, catches hold before she can go down. "Kate. What the hell?"

"Castle-" But she's slow-motion collapsing, the leading edge of sheer terror crawling up her throat.

A form rushes forward and she flinches hard. But two pairs of strong hands are supporting her, Castle is bodily lifting her back to the chair, and it's only Gates.

Deputy Chief Victoria Gates. "Beckett," she says, severely. "You shouldn't be standing up."

"My fault," Castle tells her.

"No," she chokes out. "No, I wanted to try. I want out of here." Her heart is still pounding in her mouth, making every word difficult, making _breathing_ difficult, and she can see the moment Gates steps back, calculation on her face.

"Ah, I see," her former captain says. "You did say Dr Burke has been in to talk with her?"

"Twice, though she fell asleep both times."

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here," Kate says. But her own voice sounds weak. Limp. She's holding her body so rigidly she can't even unclench her teeth.

"It's good pain medication," Castle tells her quietly. His hand at her shoulder squeezes. "You can sit back."

She takes him at his word - Castle can always be trusted - and he's right. The moment her back touches the chair, she no longer has to support her own weight. Her muscles begin to loosen, the pain recedes, the sharp edges becoming fuzzy again.

"A man paid me a visit last night," Gates starts in. "I don't much appreciate being dragged into your crazy, Detective Beckett."

 _Detective._ Well. That might be an answer. But the rest she has no idea. "A man?"

"A friend, so to speak," Gates says, narrowing her eyes. "All charges have been dropped. Officially."

Kate snaps her head up. "Charges?" The room is suddenly tilting wildly off axis. "What charges?" What _man_?

It's Castle who catches her shoulders, keeps her straight, leaning in over her. His fingers comb through her hair again. "Vikram. For Vikram, Kate."

"Oh, God," she gasps.

"Not quite an act of God," Gates says, that severely arched eyebrow in reprimand. "Though that man last night wanted me to think he was, I'm sure."

"What man?" Castle says roughly.

"I was assuming you knew him," Gates says. Acid in her voice. She purses her lips and turns back to Beckett. "Besides your anonymous avenging angel, you need to thank your boys. Esposito and Ryan have been dredging the East River for a week now. They found his body."

"The Dragon," she rasps.

Castle's head swivels to her. "Dragon. I thought that was Bracken."

"No. He was just the face. This was - the real Dragon," Kate answers. Her hands are shaking. How mortifying, for her hands to still be shaking even though she killed him. She dragged him into the river with her. "He was with Coonan in the Iraq War. They were both recruited." She shivers and has to close her eyes to swallow back the spike of pain in her side.

Is it pain or is it fear?

 _He's dead._

"Kate. Who _was_ this guy? The Dragon."

"We think he was a CIA operative," Gates says. Kate opens her eyes to see Gates with her arms crossed over her chest. "It's a good guess at this point, because of my visitor last night. And because our dead man isn't on file anywhere. No identifying markers - he burned off his own fingerprints, plus he's had a tattoo lasered. But." Gates gives a wicked smile. "The damn fool forgot to change his jacket."

Kate is completely lost. She turns to Castle, and he shakes his head in equal confusion, takes her hand. It should be criminal how _good_ it feels to have him at her side. "What does his jacket have to do with anything?"

"Forensics. His jacket matches fibers we found at the scene of Caleb Brown's apparent suicide. Caught on the railing of the balcony. And, even better - and _this_ one you can thank your husband for-"

"Rick?" Her eyes shift to him.

Gates clears her throat. "The dead man's blood is a match to the blood on your clothes. Mr. Castle apparently had the forethought to save them when EMTs cut them off you."

She grips Castle's hand. "I grabbed the knife when he came at me," she says, her voice barely coming out. "I stabbed him-"

"In the kidney," Gates finishes. "Yes. Your statement was corroborated by the ME's report."

Castle lets out a low breath, his eyes boring into Kate. "You let him get that close -just to take him out with you?"

Her throat is tight, so she only nods.

"God damn it, Kate," he growls. His hand is hurting her hand.

"Otherwise he was going to shoot me in the back of the head," she whispers.

" _Kate_."

"Officially, charges against you have been dropped," Gates interrupts.

She doesn't know what to say. She shifts her gaze to Gates, uncomprehending, and all she can think is _Where's my baby?_

"As such. You will no longer be under police custody-"

" _Custody_ -" she gasps.

"Yes," Gates answers, narrowing her eyes at Castle. "Mr Castle, if I ask you nicely, will you stop interfering with the duty rosters of my officers?"

"Yes, sir," he says, but there is not an ounce of meekness in him. Only that quiet, determined strength. The same man who cursed her for getting too close.

She tugs on his hand. "You had - you said you put our people on my door," Kate wonders, staring at him. "For protection."

"Well. You were actually under house arrest. Hospital arrest? But they were the only people we could trust," he says stubbornly. "And Deputy Chief Gates knew I was doing it." He glares at Gates. "You had to approve those schedule changes."

Something falls apart inside Kate. "Who - you're the Captain of the Twelfth?"

"No, _Ms Beckett_. I am not. But neither are you."

She bites back the grief and nods. "Yes, sir."

"You are, of course, on suspension without pay. I don't know what to call you. It's possible you'll receive a reprimand and be kicked back to uniform."

She cringes. _Castle_ cringes. But he doesn't let go of her hand.

"Or it's possible you'll be hailed as a hero. Quietly. In very small and clandestine circles. Considering my late night visitor."

"CIA?" Castle asks.

Kate stiffens. "Was it - him?"

"No, no," Castle murmurs, a swift glance to her. "They found his body already. I - looked at him myself. He's dead, just like you were afraid of."

"Who is this?" Gates snaps.

"The CIA agent who was helping us with this undercover operation," Kate says immediately, stepping in with mostly the truth. "He went missing."

"Seems to be a recurring theme."

Kate can't even care about the tone of her boss's voice, can't even be _bothered_ to care. She's supposed to be discharged today - after five rounds of hyperbaric oxygen therapy and new stitches - and she's no longer a suspect in Vikram's murder.

The CIA quite possibly has their backs again. And the NYPD has the Dragon, dredged from the river, descaled.

Gates is suddenly leaning in close to her, hands planted on the arms of Kate's chair, a look of fierce intensity. "It ends here, Ms Beckett. Do you understand? This is over now."

 **X**

 _Good luck with that one_.

He almost said it. In Kate's hospital room with Gates, he almost blurted it out. He's ashamed that it was even in his head to say, that the bitterness has replaced all that anger.

But in the quiet of their home, weeks later, he doesn't know why he's still dwelling on it.

Maybe because it's nearly three o'clock in the morning and he's in the nursery trying not to wake his daughter as he scoops her out of the crib. All for Kate.

 _This is over now._

 _Good luck with that one._

He holds Madeleine against his chest and sways with her, murmuring nothing and everything into her ear in a vain attempt to keep her from waking up. Let her stay asleep, let her just sleep.

When he comes around the corner and descends the stairs, he finds Kate asleep on the couch. Passed out, more likely; the painkillers are heavy stuff.

Instead of taking Maddy back up to her crib like he really should, he sinks down onto the couch at his wife's side. Something about the warmth of her under the cover of night, with their daughter once more shared between them - and then the windows overlooking the city, the security of elevation - it all conspires to keep him.

It's _not_ over.

That's the thing, good and bad, about Kate Beckett. It is never over.

She never gives up. Not on justice, not on him.

Not on Maddy. Not on healing from this. Not on life together-

Kate flinches hard and jerks awake beside him, a choked cry strangled in her throat. He can't do much more than press a hand to her knee, but it does the job. She orients to him and then the fear falls away, the panic slides off her face. Some of her tension remains, just that edge she's had ever since, but she finally sighs and cants into him.

He lifts his hand to the side of her face, touching her cheek, her hair. She makes a sound that the late night and the painkillers have left her vulnerable to, but she presses into his side and doesn't try to hide it from him.

There's a long silence between them. And then her fingers splay on Maddy's back. Stroke softly.

"She's asleep," Kate sighs. "At least one of us can sleep."

"Two of us, if you'd let me."

He sees the way her lips twitch into a smile she doesn't want to give. Or maybe just didn't know she could find, after everything. "Thank you," she sighs.

"What for?"

"Oh, God, Castle. Where do I start?" Her hand trembles on Madeleine's back.

He shifts the baby just enough to let Kate see their daughter's face. Since she still isn't cleared to hold her. "Start at the beginning," he says, smiling a little. "I'm listening, and we've got all the time in the world."

"If I could only _show_ you," she sighs. And then that sly curl of her lips that has always made his heart beat too fast. She kisses his chin. "Thank you for humoring me. Bringing her downstairs and letting me see her face, see her breathing, even though we shouldn't wake her up just because her mommy has issues."

He presses his lips flat. "Yeah, well, that's self-preservation. Last time we 'toughed it out', you cried all night."

"Shut up," she says, but there's no heat in it. Only weariness.

"Figured none of us should have to tough it out any longer," he tells her then. He's serious about this. For all that bitterness has replaced anger, underneath it is still, and always, love. "No point in toughing it out, Kate. If you want to see our daughter, then you should see her."

"Just stupid nightmares," she mutters.

He lifts his hand from Maddy's back and catches the ends of Kate's hair, dusts it across her cheek. "Not stupid. And wouldn't you rather snuggle on the couch with Madstar than call Dr Burke and have a nice long chat?"

She wrinkles her nose at him. But she wriggles in a little closer.

"Then thank you," she says into the quiet. "No one else would have me. But you-"

"I got you. And you got this, Kate. You can do it."

"We," she murmurs.

"Hm?" The weight of their daughter on his chest reminds him of those lonely nights without her, so he opens his eyes. Finds her studying him intently.

"We can do it. _We_. The pronoun that's always missing from my vocabulary."

"Hey. Dr Burke said no more of that."

She huffs. He's serious though. He flicks his fingers against her cheek and drops her hair, shifts instead to put his arm around her shoulders. She comes into him even as he settles back into the couch. Her body stretches, moves, and finally - finally - fits into place against his.

Perfect fit.

Kate lets out a long breath and lays her arm on Maddy's back, fingers stroking the girl's soft hair.

"That's more like it," he says, touching his lips to her forehead. He always knew it would come back around to this. Even those lonely nights, he expected to find her here with him again. "That's better, Kate."

"Much better," she murmurs. Her words are slurring with exhaustion. "Love you. Love you right this time. Promise."

He cups the side of her face.

He believes it's true. Believes in her. More than anything.

 **X**

 _fin_


End file.
